AEGEE Goes Cinema: Luca Giazzi's Great Movie Project

There are many short videos about AEGEE, but a real documentary, a real movie? That has never been done before. Luca Giazzi, photographer at AEGEE-Bergamo as well as filmmaker and Cinematographer at Luca Giazzi Video, wants to change it. At the Agora in Bergamo he was not only shooting material for this great enterprise, he also presented his movie trailer as appetiser. In order to make this film come true, Luca and his team started a crowdfunding campaign. You can donate and appear in the credits of the movie, get a T-shirt, a signed DVD or even become executive producer!

Luca and Raquel, his girlfriend and screenwriter

GT: Luca, what’s your project about?
Luca Giazzi: The project is called “The Art of the Possible” and it is a documentary about AEGEEans. To be precise, it is a trip across Europe to tell untold stories of people from AEGEE. I am trying to give my personal view of AEGEE throughout people I have met. Of course, people with particular stories, which are interesting to tell. For example Jorge, the re-founder of the new AEGEE-Dresden, or Anna, the main organiser of Agora Kyiv last year. I got the idea for the movie together with my girlfriend Raquel from AEGEE-Alicante.

GT: What’s your own background?
Luca Giazzi: I’m from AEGEE Bergamo, I joined last year and, of course, AEGEE changed my life. I am a professional filmmaker and photographer.

Jorge from AEGEE-Dresden will appear in the movie

GT: What’s your experience in film-making so far? What’s the biggest project you filmed so far?
Luca Giazzi: It’s been five years since I began shooting videos. I am a freelancer, so it means every day I have something new and different to work on: weddings, music videos, corporate videos, advertisements and many more. Last year I was part of the crew of “Anséra – Trace the Future”. It was the first time in the cinema environment for me, and it really changed my mind about what I wanted to do with my job. That’s why, when I joined AEGEE and went to an SU for the first time, I realised there were so many untold stories available to me – it was unthinkable not to accept the challenge.

GT: You were also filming at the Agora. How was that? After all, at an Agora 100 stories happen at the same time…
Luca Giazzi: Telling what happens at an Agora in three minutes only is almost impossible. And AEGEEans are so different from each other: in the Agora you could find people who came there to discuss about the future of our association, but also the ones who came to meet their SU friends, and me and my team had to pack everything along with the sponsors’ requests. By the way, it has been really inspiring, funny, sad and emotional at the same time. I have to thank Riccardo Malarba for shooting and editing along with me, and Tiffany Pesenti for directing us the right way.

At the Agora the participants could see a movie trailer.

GT: You showed a trailer at the Agora in Bergamo, during the plenary on Saturday. What feedback did you get?
Luca Giazzi: A really good one. Also some CD members approached me to congratulate. They already knew about the project of course, but showing them what we have been doing from October 2015 till today was better than simply tell them. During the premiere of the trailer there were 50 people wearing our official t-shirt in order to support us.

GT: When did you start working on the project?
Luca Giazzi: I began shooting last December, and the deadline for editing is 1st October. The final product, a 50 minutes long documentary, or docu-movie, will be hopefully presented to some indie film festivals around Europe. Then it will be distributed in free streaming in April 2017.

You can contribute to the movie!

GT: On 25th of May, right after the Agora, you started your fundraising campaign on a crowdfunding webpage. So you received 406 Euros. How much do you need and are you optimistic to get the amount?
Luca Giazzi: Indeed, the trailer is online now on our official Facebook page www.facebook.com/taotpmovie, along with the fundraising campaign on Indiegogo with a 2500 Euros goal in 30 days. The trailer is going quite well, with an average of 1500 views per day. So far all the money came from my personal bank account, so I really hope to reach the target. The deadline is the 24th of June. Marianna Lipińska from AEGEE-Kraków is managing the fundraising and she’s doing a really good job: it’s not that easy to tell people to economically trust your ideas if they don’t even know you.

On location in Kyiv

GT: How expensive is it to make the documentary?
Luca Giazzi: Well, we were lucky since we have all the gear we need, so there’s nothing to buy. It will require more or less 5000 Euros of real expenses, without considering the time me and my crew are spending working on it. It’s actually not that much. Similar projects usually cost 10.000 to 15.000 Euros.

GT: So the 5000 Euros are basically costs for travelling, food and lodging?
Luca Giazzi: And gear insurance, yes.

GT: So how does it work in practice? What do you want to film and in how many places?
Luca Giazzi: The idea is to show a ten-day trip around Europe to meet the people we choose. Jorge from AEGEE-Dresden mostly describes how AEGEE affected his university and job career; he speaks about interactions between university and AEGEE. Anna from AEGEE-Kyiv talks about the Agora in her city and her personal development in organising events. The film will also present Philipp and Lucia from SUCT, who talk about the SU project. Then there will be Benoit from AEGEE-Toulouse, who after his first event decided to go on an eight-month trip across Latin America. And then there will be also a couple from AEGEE, which got married. Everything will be filled with b-rolls – random video clips – from some AEGEE events, such as the Agora in Bergamo, as well as events in Castellon, Brussels and Summer Universities.

GT: That’s a big variety. The primary purpose is not explaining AEGEE?
Luca Giazzi: The aim is not describing what AEGEE is, for that task there are a lot of people who are doing it. I am only telling what some people in AEGEE did with their lives, and it’s up to the audience to tell if it’s worth to join such an association or not.

Filming in progress

GT: How much of the film have you filmed already?
Luca Giazzi: Three out of five interviews and two out of four AEGEE events.

GT: When will you film the other ones?
Luca Giazzi: In six weeks all the production phase will be done. We also already have a rough cut of the first two interviews and next week the composer will send me the original song he did for us.

At the Agora many supporters like Christina Reshetova wore the project T-shirt

GT: Wow, you have a composer?
Luca Giazzi: Yes, his name is Giacomo Corpino, a guy from Bergamo – unfortunately not from AEGEE, but I am trying to convince him to join. We’re good firends and he is trying to join a private school in London for sound engineers in the film industry. Consider how he’s working on this project, he will be accepted for sure.

GT: You have a big team?
Luca Giazzi: My girlfriend Raquel Corbalan Fernandez from AEGEE-Alicante is the writer of the project – she has been in AEGEE for six years, so she knows the right people for such a project. Also, she’s talking with the people in the movie. Then there is Victor from AEGEE-Madrid, who is helping with the shootings sometimes, Marianna from AEGEE-Kraków, who’s setting up the fundraising and then Giacomo, the audio guy.

GT: So what’s your motivation to make a big movie? You could simply take every interview for itself, which would probably generate a much bigger audience than one big film…
Luca Giazzi: Yeah, I cold just point the camera to someone speaking about how fun AEGEE is, how it changed his life and so on but, there are different ways to tell a story – and this is the one I know how to do. Of course, probably somebody would say that it’s not fair, or genuine because, there’s always a bit of fiction in a movie – just like when I shoot boring weddings and in the video they look like super amazing. But the point is: there are many people out there that don’t know what AEGEE really is. They only know that when they go to an SU, or at least most of them. This is what I would like to do in order to make them aware of what they could find in it.